The present invention relates to a technique for controlling a storage area allocation in a storage system.
Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2005-25422 (hereinafter, referred to as “Patent Document 1”) discloses a technique to allocate a volume of a storage system to a host, utilizing the interface defined by CIM (Common Information Model) that is established by DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force). In the Patent Document 1, a management computer accepts from an administrator, via GUI, a hint value of a hint applied to the volume which is to be created. Here, the “hint” represents guidance defined by the CIM for creating the volume. There are eight types of hints in total; Data Availability, Access Randomness, Access Direction, Access Size, Access Latency, Access Bandwidth, Storage Cost, and Storage Efficiency. The management computer creates in the storage system, a volume according to a hint value of the hint accepted from the administrator, and allocates the volume to the host designated by the administrator. For example, a volume is created employing RAID (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks) level, which has availability being associated with each of the hint values (e.g., represented by ten stages, from 0 to 9) for the hint “Data Availability” accepted from the administrator, and this volume is allocated to the host designated by the administrator.
By use of the hint, it is possible to abstractly designate a volume to be created. Furthermore, even when a hardware configuration of the storage system is different by vendor, it is possible to request the volume creation in a unified format.
As mentioned above, according to the technique described in the Patent Document 1, even when the hardware configuration of the storage system is different by vendor, it is possible to request the volume creation in a unified format.
However, in the case where the hardware configuration of the storage system is different by vendor, a performance and/or a setting of the volume created in the storage system may be different even for the same hint value of the same hint. For instance, it is assumed here that the same hint value of “Data Availability” is designated to each of the storage system S1 of the vendor A and to the storage system S2 of the vendor B, then, allowing the management computer to create a volume. For this case, there is a possibility that in the storage system S1, a volume structured with RAID 5 is created, and in the storage system S2, a volume is created to which a remote copy has been applied.
Therefore, it is necessary for the administrator to grasp in advance a meaning indicated by each hint value (performance and/or setting of the volume created based on each hint value), with respect to each storage system. Then, according to the meaning indicated by the hint value in each storage system, the administrator has to specify a storage system which is capable of creating a volume available for a service usage of the host, and to decide a hint value to create this available volume in this storage system. As the number of the vendors is increased, heavier burden is placed on the administrator.
The present invention has been made considering the above situation, and an object of the present invention is to provide a technique which is capable of reducing a burden on the administrator in creating a volume.